A. A. A. S. Meeting

Stars beamed down at the hundreds of scientists who milled into Des Moines' Shrine Temple for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week. The stars were in the building's domed ceiling, marked there by the resident host of the convention, President Daniel Walter Morehouse of Drake University, 53, famed astronomer, discoverer of the Morehouse comet. There is a story at Drake that when the ceiling was first completed and the lights turned on, Dr. Morehouse scanned the celestial charade, pointed to one bright speck among the thousands and exclaimed: "That star does not belong there. Take it out." But that, to scientists, is a prosaic anecdote when there are papers to be heard on such exotic subjects as "Respiration of Tomato Fruits," "Animal Ecology of Oaks," "Cytologic Changes Following Vasoligation of the Kidney of the Albino Rat."

Manhattan's Henry Fairfield Osborn gave his crushed fedora hat and fur-lined overcoat (it has fancy buttons) to the cloakroom attendant and strolled to the speakers' platform, where he presided as retiring president. (California Tech's Robert Andrews Millikan is the incoming president.) His speech tended to show that man and monkeys are descended from so remote an ancestor that they should not be considered related.

The goatee of Yale's Irving Fisher was to be seen at the centre of several discussion groups but did not tarry long as Dr. Fisher had other learned meetings to attend in Washington. Other goatees present belonged to the Department of Agriculture's Dr. Leland Ossian Howard, specialist on parasitic hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants, etc.), and his departmental colleague Dr. Altus Lacy Quaintance, specialist in aleyrodidae (fruit fly).

Dr. Morehouse's organization of the meeting was efficient. Nearly 1,600 papers were read (mostly by title), flecks of fertile pollen from flowering minds. (Next week, after the meeting's close, TIME will report outstanding papers read, points made.--ED.)

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